A jury in the state has decided to indict seven former Trump associates. 11 local Republicans are also to be indicted.
The jury believes that all 18 were central in trying to deny Joe Biden’s election victory in the state in 2020, where he surprisingly won against former President Donald Trump.
Among the defendants are several highly profiled Trump employees.
Their names have not yet been released by the authorities, but according to the New York Times and the Washington Post, these are the people involved.
- Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
- Attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Elli, John Eastman and Christina Bobb.
- Election campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and campaign worker Mike Roman.
Donald Trump is also mentioned as a co-conspirator in the indictment, but he has not been charged.
Also read: Organizing elections in Arizona: Must have a bodyguard
Must have signed false papers
Prosecutors in Arizona believe they have participated in a plot to give Donald Trump the election victory in the state in 2020 – despite the fact that it was Joe Biden who won.
The 11 local politicians in the case are said to have met secretly at the party’s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona on December 14, 2020, to sign fake papers declaring Trump the winner of the election, and them as the state’s official electorsIt is the electors who represent the voters in a presidential election in the United States, and who, in practical terms, choose the president. Read more about the scheme in the fact box below. writes NBC.
The document was sent to Congress and to the national archive, where they chose to disregard it, writes NTB.
Electors in the United States
It is the electors who represent the voters in a presidential election in the United States, and who, in practical terms, choose the president.
- The US presidential election is based on a so-called electoral system. Each party nominates its electors. It is the voters in the state who, through their votes, decide which party’s electors are sent to elect the country’s next president and vice president.
- The concept is a “winner takes all” concept: the candidate who gets the most votes in the state gets all the electors from here.
Read more about how the electoral system can turn out here.
View more
Among them we find senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Kelli Ward, who was chairman of the Republican Party in the state.
This is the case
The background to the case is Trump’s allegations of election fraud. He believed that the victory in Arizona was “stolen” from him, and refused to accept the result.
Local Republicans were thus ready to be so-called “fake voters” for Trump, in the same way as was seen, among other things, in states such as Georgia, where Trump has later been indicted.
Arizona has largely been considered a safe state for the Republican Party. With the exception of Bill Clinton in 1996, the state had gone Republican in every election between 1952 and 2016.
But in 2020, incumbent President Joe Biden surprisingly won the state from Trump, with a margin of just over 10,000 votes.
Also read: Michigan has charged 16 Republicans with election crimes
13 months of investigation
Wednesday’s indictment comes after a year-long investigation by state Attorney General Kris Mayes.
– We have conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the false election plot in the state over the past 13 months, she says, according to NBC.
– I understand that some believe that the indictment did not come quickly enough, and I know that I will be criticized for having investigated the case at all. But, as I have said before, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined.
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